Page 123 of Gamebreaker

I got up and climbed the last flight.

My apartment looked exactly how I'd left it yesterday afternoon before the game. The stiletto boots by the couch that I'd half-considered wearing to drive Cam insane. Four lipsticks uncapped on the bathroom counter, because I'd been in a hurry, because I'd been excited, because I'd wanted to look good for a woman who couldn't be seen looking at me. The string lights I'd hung last month, still glowing warm and cozy and completely at odds with how hollow I felt.

All of it was the same.

I was completely different.

I dropped my keys on the counter, kicked off my sneakers, and went straight to the bathroom.

I flipped on the light, and there I was in the mirror.

My hair was a disaster. Not a cute, tousled, just-been-thoroughly-handled disaster. A real one. Cam had pulled my ponytail loose against her front door before I'd even gotten my shoes off, and then I'd spent the night with it spread across her cotton pillowcases with no bonnet, no scarf, rubbing against the cotton every time I'd moved, and I'd moved a lot. The right side was crushed flat. The left side had expanded into a frizzy, dry halo that defied physics. And at the nape of my neck, where Cam had fisted her hand and held on, where I'd held on to my own hair when she told me to, there was a tangle so dense I could feel it with my fingertips like a knot in a necklace chain.

I'd complained about the bonnet last night. Cam had seemed mildly concerned until I closed my eyes and mumbled gibberish, and then she'd pulled me down onto her chest, and I'd forgotten all about it.

I made myself look at the rest.

My lips were swollen. My eyes were red and too bright. And the marks. On my deep brown skin, they didn't show up red the way they would on Mia; they'd gone darker than the rest of me, deep plum and almost black at the centers, a scatter of shadows down my throat. One under my ear. One where my neck met my shoulder, where I could see the actual curve of her teeth. Two along my collarbone. A dark, wide bruise on the side of my throat, right over the pulse she'd held in her hand. The lines from her belt had almost faded from my wrists, but if I turned them toward the light, I could still find them.

A record of every time she'd made me feel like I belonged to her.

Whose are you?

Yours.

I touched the bruise on my throat and pressed down until it should hurt.

It did. Just not enough.

The sob came out of nowhere. It punched up through my chest with enough force to double me over the sink, and I clapped my hand over my mouth because the walls in this building were thin, and I could not survive my seventy-year-old neighbor knocking to ask if I was okay. So I stood there with my palm crushed against my mouth and cried into it. Ugly, wet, shaking. Snot. Hiccups. My whole body heaving like I was trying to throw up the night.

This was worse than Henry.

I hadn't expected that. I'd thought no heartbreak could top waking up to the Fashion City Sun with Laine's worst memory splashed across the front page and realizing it had come from my kitchen table. But Henry had betrayed me. Henry had used my trust as a weapon, and in a way, that had been a gift. He'd handed me a villain. He'd made it so easy to throw the ring at his face and never look back.

Cam hadn't betrayed me.

Cam had been honest. Cam had asked for a safeword before she touched me. Cam had folded my clothes at the foot of her bed while I slept. Cam had looked at me with her eyes full of pain and said I could fall in love with you too, and then she'd let me walk out her door, because she couldn't give me what I needed, and she was too decent to pretend she could.

And I recognized that kind of love. I hated that I recognized it.

I'd been loved like that before. Loved for real, with my whole family's hearts, by people who'd been at every honor roll ceremony and every choir solo and every Sunday dinner. And the second I needed them to love me out loud, as I actually was, the love hadn't gone away. It had just gone quiet. Old birthday cards from my family, sitting in my junk drawer. Love I could only have in private now.

I'd sworn I'd never accept that kind of love again.

I'd just left the only woman who'd ever made me feel completely safe, because she was offering me exactly that kind.

I slid down to the bathroom floor with my back against the tub, pulled my knees to my chest, and cried until my face hurt.

At ten to seven, I called Mia.

I wasn't going to. It was Saturday. Mia had her own life, and a girlfriend, and a weekend she'd been looking forward to all week. But my thumb found her name anyway, because it always does.

She answered on the second ring, her voice thick with sleep. "Harper? What's wrong?"

I opened my mouth, and only a sound came out.

"Okay." I heard her sit up. Heard the rustle of sheets, Laine murmuring a question in the background, Mia murmuring back. "Okay. I'm here. You don't have to talk yet. Just breathe with me."